Juniper Networks’ Secure Access SSL VPN Appliance (SA-6000)

Summary of Clear Choice Test of Juniper Networks’ Secure Access SSL VPN Appliance (SA-6000).

Data sheet for Juniper Networks’ Secure Access SSL VPN Appliance (SA-6000) Starting price: $30,000 Overall score: 4.5

Juniper’s SSL VPN offering repeats its leadership of our head-to-head testing with a huge set of features, strong configuration capabilities and outstanding interoperability (see results of interoperability tests).

That said, is it a slam-dunk for every application? Well, certainly in some cases, Juniper’s Secure Access SSL VPN is the best choice for most enterprise deployments from among the products we tested. Complex access-control environments (see results of policy tests), especially difficult application-translation problems, extranet-focused line-of-business projects are all places where Juniper’s product should make your short list. We’ve also been impressed with Juniper’s thinking in areas such as client efficiency (with its combination SSL+IPSec approach), and the extreme flexibility of the Secure Access product. There’s almost no SSL deployment where putting Juniper in would be a big mistake, an endorsement we don’t give lightly.

Of course, the Secure Access SSL VPN has its weak spots. Because of the age of its management interface, and the way Juniper (or NetScreen or Neoteris engineers, as this product dates back two acquisitions ago) engineers have packed every conceivable feature into it, the product can be complex to configure and difficult to understand (see results of manageability tests). This drives up configuration and operations costs, especially if you don’t need the huge feature set. Juniper’s product also can handle Citrix users, but not with great adeptness. Similarly, in a pure remote-access case, Juniper works without question, but it’s not as end-user focused as some of the competition.

Of course, there’s always the question of price. Although Juniper has finally released full functionality on its baby box, the SA700, a basic full-featured setup will cost you around $5,000 for 25 users.

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